


The women who beat Stella

by starsonyourskin



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/F, Mild Kink, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:45:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9124243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsonyourskin/pseuds/starsonyourskin
Summary: Criminals all over the country freed from prison and gone without a trace, none of the cases seemingly connected.Stella Gibson reflects on the past week's case, until Irene Adler enters the hotel bar.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Only one more sleep! This is something to tide you over.

Stella Gibson entered the Library Bar at the Lanesborough Hotel wearing a tight, black leather skirt and a crimson blouse. The case had absorbed her for much of the week, and she felt she was owed at least one stiff drink before retiring to her flat. Images of the past week flashed before her mind’s eye.

_A faux-Italianate building on Charles St. White stucco decorated the ornate arches that harboured cast iron fences. Home office dignitaries embarrassed to call in her services as superintendent, as her conservative chief inspector had plainly refused._

The bartender handed her a martini. She absent-mindedly stroked her thigh.

_A staggering amount of staff, women and men, from Directors to interns, all let go._

Stella let her eye fall on a beautiful woman with black hair pinned up, tight white dress, blood red lips, the way you might follow a familiar classical tune in the back of your head. 

_Criminals all over the country freed from prison and gone without a trace, none of the cases seemingly connected. Her concern were those in London._

The woman weaved her way through the thick Friday crowd. Her cheekbones were like cut glass, her skin pale and creamy. She looked aristocratic, as if the Royals’ blood hadn’t been tainted by centuries of inbreeding.

Her phone buzzed. 

_It was work, last night._

Must be a wrong number, Stella thought.

“Hello, DSI Gibson. No whiskey tonight?”

Stella looked up. It was the woman she’d been attracted to. She raised an eyebrow.

“Why do you think I like whiskey?”

“I know what you like.” She languidly pulled off her leather gloves, and sipped Stella’s martini.

“Now, I am only going to say this once,” Irene Adler said. “What I want to do to you is what I usually charge thousands an hour for.” She handed Stella a card. “This is my address. Kate will greet you.” And just like that, she turned on her heel, leaving Stella to trace her muscular calves up to her ass, narrow waist and slender neck. 

It was not like Stella to lie. Even to herself. She had not just come here for a drink, but for a distraction. A distraction in the form of some mindless sex, preferably with someone whose occupation prevented them from being candid about their conquest. And that woman smelled like sex. She thumbed the embossed card. 

_42 Wilton Crescent_  
_The Woman_

But who was she? 

A middle-aged man with a paunch sidled up to her. His wedding ring tan line was obvious. “Come here often?”

She shot him a look of utter contempt, threw her coat over her arm and left. 

The cold evening air awakened her senses and the slideshow of the past week continued, her subconscious mind working hard to find clues her conscious mind didn’t even suspect.

_She’d started with the Assistant Head of Criminal Justice. The woman hadn’t met her eyes during the interview. She’d fidgeted with her sleeve as the story came tumbling out. “She liked playing with sensations, with hot and cold, sometimes at the same time.”_

She heard footsteps behind her, slowly growing closer to her own cadence until they matched perfectly. An old spy’s trick to catch a colleague’s attention unwitnessed. She turned around and saw no-one. An uneasy feeling engulfed her. But Stella did not let simple fear deter her. That one-note monster: stop. It wasn’t worthy of her consideration.

_The second one had seemed proud, defiant even. The dullness of his life had not permitted him such pleasure, and he’d been renewed by it._

Once she’d arrived, the classical pillars seemed only fitting for a week containing so much decadence. 

“There you are. She’s in the drawing room,” Kate said, casting an approving glance down Stella’s blouse as she took her coat.

Stella took a left turn into a room with crown moulding and gold stencilled wall paper and the first thing that hit her sense was a snap of coldness as she moved into the woman’s space. 

“So, it was you, out on the street.”

“I couldn’t let you get away, you see. Usually they’re out of their seats like a shot, but you took an impressive thirty seconds.”

Stella, for one of the first times in her life, had no answer to that. There was no compliment there, just backhandedness.

“I thought I’d follow your lead.” Irene manoeuvred her slim legs around the coffee table as she set two martini glasses down. She sat down gracefully, all stark lines and pre-war beauty.

“I’ll make no bones about this. You are the single most attractive detective in the Met I have ever come across, as well as the most promiscuous one at that. I find the combination exciting.”

An intuitive response awakened Stella’s sex. She really didn’t want to feel aroused. What she felt even more was a sense of acute danger, a voice saying go go go. But Irene Adler had one of those faces that you couldn’t tear yourself away from for fear of losing the memory of such beauty. 

“And what is it that you charge thousands of pounds for per hour?”

“Oh, now don’t play coy.” Irene said. “There is only one thing that would make men - and women - so foolish as to fritter away their savings so frivolously. But Stella,” Irene held her gaze at Stella’s breasts - ”I want to make you scream for free.”

There was a double-edgedness to her proposal that hung in the air like the trill of a triangle. 

“Because, Stella, you have eyes like a frozen lake and a pin-up figure like you came straight from the forties and I want to know what it looks like when your eyes turn inward and the planets abandon us.”

Stella crossed her legs and leant back in her chair. She sipped her martini slowly. “Surely, if you do what you say you do, then the idea of an erotic exploration with anyone doesn’t hold that much of a secret to you anymore?”

“There is a world of difference between playing and working. Kate can attest.”

Irene sensed that Stella had no more cards left to play. “Follow me.” She swished past Stella’s chair, confident that she would do as she was told. Stella surprised herself by doing just that. 

“Pain or pleasure?” Irene asked in the bedroom.

“Pleasure,” Stella said resolutely, as she looked at the array of instruments that had been hung on the wall like a careful collection of tools - whips, chains, collars. 

“I wasn’t asking for either or. Merely your preference. You’ll have both.” Irene made it clear that this was not up for debate. 

“No, I won’t. I don’t like to lose control, and I have enough pain in my life as it is,” Stella said.

Irene feigned sympathy. “Oh poor Stella,” she said mockingly, before returning to her natural authority. “This is my domain. You’ll either submit, or you can leave.” She sweetened her harsh words by pushing her tits into Stella’s back and running a hand down Stella’s front, ending at the top of her skirt. A heady hit of endorphins clouded Stella’s judgement and she was in thrall to Irene.

“Lie down and undress.” 

Irene had her back to her as she picked out a few of her favourite implements. 

***

Every inch of Stella’s body ached. Her synapses had fired so wildly, so intensely that she had moved beyond catharsis into numbness and back again. 

Irene’s breasts hung close to her face as she was bent over Stella to untie the silken scarves that had kept her chained to the bed for the last hours. 

“There. Kate will see you out.”

Stella hadn’t laid a finger on Irene but she was too much of a mess to even voice that thought. Her mascara had run into her hairline, the now cloying sensation of bodily fluids on parts of her unwashed, and the aftermath of orgasms that just wouldn’t let her come down. Splotches of candlewax on her spine, small wet spots where ice cubes had been. She hadn’t known how pain could inch into pleasure so quietly. 

Kate came into the room and Stella tried to cover herself in vain. 

“There’s really no need for that, Stella,” Kate said, as she helped Stella out of the bed. “I’m going to make you look presentable again.”

A scaldingly hot shower made her shoulders feel part of her again, after she’d been splayed in every which direction for longer than was bearable. Kate scrubbed all of her down with a pleasantly rough salt exfoliator and then wrapped her a big soft towel. She provided her with some fresh clothes and invited her to sit down so she could do Stella’s makeup.

She was working on Stella’s lipliner when she glanced down in a way that triggered a memory for Stella. 

_“She liked playing with sensations, with hot and cold, sometimes at the same time. It was addictive. She’d make you feel so intensely that you’d say things to her you wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else. And you’d do things for her, too. Favours.”_

“Kate.” Stella paused. “Do you work for the Home office?”

A smile crept into Kate’s lips. "Check your phone." 

**Author's Note:**

> A few lines are reminiscent of a Carol Ann Duffy poem.


End file.
